Apple now allows 100 characters of keywords in all languages of the App Store

Bytes Build Character — Especially for Localized Keywords

Good news for app developers who localize keywords and app descriptions in order to boost sales. Until recently, Apple had the keyword limit set at 100 bytes. This has always worked fine for the English-speaking audience. After all, each letter of the English alphabet is exactly 1 byte. But what about other languages and alphabets?

It turns out that the Spanish letter ñ, for example, is actually 2 bytes. And even those very compact-looking Korean and Chinese characters often weigh in at a hefty 4 bytes. The end result was that, until a recent change in iTunes Connect, your internationally localized keywords were actually far less than 100 characters. In fact, iTunes Connect would truncate the keywords, which often went unnoticed.

Today iTunes Connect will allow 100 characters (including spaces and commas) for any language. (As a side note, spaces are unnecessary, so you should remove them to add room for more keywords.)

Localizing Keywords for the App Store

When you do localize your keywords, you often find that foreign-language keywords are longer than their English cousins. French is estimated to be 30% longer than English (and much more wordy), and German has a tendency for very long individual words. If you present a translator with a full 100 characters of English keywords, you’ll find that, more often than not, the keyword localization returned to you will be over the 100-character limit.

Write your words in order of importance

There is a simple lesson here. When you send us your app description and keywords to be translated, make sure the keyword list in order of importance. Why? That way, if you have to leave out some of the localize keywords we send back, you’ll know exactly which ones you can drop without affecting your international keyword campaign.

Add more keywords for Asian languages

The extra characters available to you for compact Asian languages like Korean and Chinese are also an often overlooked opportunity. Since you can include more keywords as space allows, we suggest you add additional keyword ideas to your list. As always, you may rely on some professional advice from translators, who usually come up with unique keywords that are local to their audience.

Are you ready to localize your keywords? Contact us. We’re not just a winsome group of translators who localize every language of the App Store, we’re very friendly too. 😉